Content management systems (CMS), document management systems (DMS) and data management systems refer to systems for managing electronic documents. In the present disclosure the term “document management system” is a general term referring also to content and data management systems. Such systems comprise various features for managing electronic documents, e.g. storing, versioning, indexing, searching for and retrieval of documents. It is appreciated that there are both dynamic and static document management systems. The difference between dynamic and static systems is the way they store files. In the static systems files are stored e.g. in a constant treelike hierarchy that defines relationships for folders and documents stored in the tree. In the dynamic systems the files may be given identifications that define their existence in the system. The location of the files is not constant, but may vary in a virtual space depending on the situation.
Document management systems are often used by multiple client devices that contact the server in order to work with the documents stored in the document management system. Every time the client device refreshes or access the folder located in the document management system, the server returns the full content of the folder. A performance problem relating to a retrieval of folders may occur especially when multiple clients are working with the server simultaneously. The folder listing may become slow because of a lot of data reading and processing and data transfer.
Therefore there is a need for an improved solution, by means of which processing load and data read can be reduced. Due to that, also processing times can be reduced.